The Yellow Door, Lisburn
Posted: 09 November '10 by Niall
The Yellow Door, Lisburn, County Antrim
Price and quality.. It’s a tricky balancing act. It’s also a pet peeve of mine – more than a few of the restaurants in Belfast get it wrong on both counts. There’s nothing worse than leaving a restaurant underwhelmed by the food and overcharged in the bill.
With this in mind Kelly and I decided to look slightly further afield and settled on the Yellow Door in Lisburn.
To those of you not in the know, the Yellow Door is rightly famous for the excellent breads and towering sandwiches in their Lisburn Road outlet, and the gourmet dining in their Portadown restaurant. Their bread is what I know the them for best, so good that The Yellow Door has an almost cultish following in Belfast – if you follow Stephen Ferris on Twitter you’ll know that the Ulster and Ireland rugby star is one of the faithful.
The Lisburn deli has been open for 4 months now and has just launched a new bistro menu, promoting an incredible £10 for a starter and a main course between 6pm and 9pm on Thursdays. Being a BYOB (Bring Your Own Bottle) restaurant, the price appealed to my inner penny-pincher so, with a bottle of Torres “Sangre de Toro” 2009 in hand, we entered through the yellow door..
Well, it was black-framed glass affair, but artistic licence and all that..
The restaurant
The whole restaurant, from the deli to the bistro area, reminded us immediately of the Carluccio’s outlets and that’s no bad thing. Pine flooring, chrome shelving packed with Yellow Door cookbooks and produce, dark wood tables and chairs which are well spaced, some jazz playing in the background – it all creates a clean, airy atmosphere amid all of the epicurean treats. It’s a comfortable space, one that we were more than happy to relax and enjoy the evening in. It’s a bistro after all and, to my mind, that’s what a bistro should be – welcoming, comfortable, and familiar.
The staff have a big part to play in this, and they pulled it off here: informal and chatty without being too casual.
The starters
Although the menu did look a little sparse at first glance, having 3 starters and 3 mains to choose from, the range of flavours and ingredients between the dishes was good. It certainly didn’t present us with any difficulty in making a choice.
Kelly went for the Goats’ Cheese with Pickled Beetroot. It’s a difficult dish to get right with all of those sharp acids on one plate. The Yellow Door did a good job, though – the Goats’ Cheese was breadcrumbed and deep fried, which created another texture on the plate and muted the tangy cheese a little, while the beetroot was both sweet and tart. Thin slivers of apple added another foil to the piquant goats’ cheese, although Kelly thought that the basil-infused oil drizzled over the green salad and the pureed beetroot were perhaps at little too much.
My Caesar Salad with Parmesan Crouton was surprisingly good. I say surprisingly because I wasn’t sure that their was any real room for the chef to deviate from the standard chicken-with-creamy-sauce-on-lettuce. The chicken was lightly smoked, the sauce was delicately flavoured, and the crouton turned out to be a crisp, toasted slice of bread with melted parmesan rather than the ubiquitous cubes of stale cardboard. There were plenty of different flavours and textures here too, and they married to make a fresh, tasty and above all enjoyable salad – and it’s not often that I say that!
The mains
Our starters were on something of a sticky wicket from the start, to be honest – we were both looking forward to our main courses.
I’d chosen the Pan-fried Seabass with Chorizo and a Bean Ragout, which sounded like a great combination of flavours and textures. When the dishes were served I certainly wasn’t disappointed – the seabass fillet had crisp skin and moist, delicate flesh, served on a bed of spinach and a thick layer of the rich, tomato-based ragout. The dish was rounded off by a fried slice of chorizo and a quenelle of homemade black olive tapendade. With my glass of Spanish wine I could have been in the Med.
As good as my seabass was, Kelly clearly had the edge with her selection – Slow-roasted Pork Belly with Salt & Chilli Squid and roasting juices. There’s no part of that phrase that doesn’t sound delicious! Again, the portions were very impressive: a thick slab of pork belly which had been roasted until tender, sticky and full of flavour; 6 squid rings in a light, spicy batter; a bed of wilted spinach; creamy and flavoursome cauliflower puree; and intensely meaty roasting juices. Despite some initial doubt about the squid and pork being on the same plate, we were proved wrong – they just worked together. The dish was simply superb – worthy of any local restaurant we’ve eaten in, and certainly a higher price-tag.
| Starters: | |
|---|---|
| Breadcrumbed Goats’ Cheese w/pickled beetroot | £4.00 |
| Smoked Chicken Caesar Salad | £4.00 |
| Mains: | |
| Lamb Slow-Roast Belly of Pork w/Salt and Chilli Squid Rings | £6.00 |
| Pan-fried Seabass with Chorizo and Bean Ragout | £6.00 |
| Total: | £20.00 |
Our verdict
As much as I don’t want this review to be all about the price, I just can’t get away from it: £10 for this meal was incredible. When you take into account the fact that the ingredients are all fresh (including the squid in the squid-rings, which is something of a minor miracle in this day and age), the thought that has clearly been put into the menu, and the obvious talent of the chefs, the price is even more astounding.
Aside from the price, the quality of the cooking was high: while the starters were solid crowd-pleasing choices, the main courses really were very good, the pork belly in particular. The menu is perfect for a bistro, with a mixture of staples and some surprises thrown in there for good measure. The Yellow Door also get the portion-size right – we really didn’t need any side-dishes.
Kelly and I would certainly recommend the Yellow Door in Lisburn – it’s comfortable, friendly, easy-on-the-wallet.. but above all, it’s good.
You can see the photos here:
The Yellow Door
46-48 Market Square,
Lisburn,
County Antrim
Northern Ireland
BT28 1AG
T: 028 92606890
E: info@yellowdoordeli.co.uk
W: www.yellowdoordeli.co.uk
F: The Yellow Door on Facebook
You can also see Yellow Door, Lisburn on Google Maps.
Tags: belfast restaurants, favourite local restaurant, restaurant, restaurant review, simon dougan, the yellow door
Categories: Restaurant Reviews
after reading this review I was astounded to see a rating of only 3 out of 5, the author seemed extremely impressed with the interior, the price and above all the food, 10 quid (each) for a high quality starter and main course, what more do you want? at least give the place a fair rating after complimenting it so much.
Hi Gav,
Thanks for commenting. We take your point – but here’s the thing..
The Yellow Door, Lisburn was a very good night out, and hopefully that comes across in the review. However, we’re trying to review a wide variety of eateries, from fine-dining to local cafes, and the rating has to reflect that – the score has to be relative to the other establishments that we’ve eaten in.
The Yellow Door scored the same as Made in Belfast, The Barking Dog, and so on. The fact that The Yellow Door, serving a limited bistro menu, scored the same as these other places illustrates just how highly we thought of our night out there. If our members read the reviews it’s pretty obvious which one we prefer.
But is the bistro menu on a par with the dining experience in James Street South, which scored a 4? Of course not and, I’m sure, nor are they trying to be. The two establishments are working with entirely different goals in mind, and budgets too, for that matter.
It’s a difficult balancing act, and one that Kelly and I are continually looking at.
What is important is that the review tells you what to expect, what we thought was good, whether we recommend it.. and where we see the venue fitting in with our other reviews.
That said, it’s always good to get feedback – if you think we’re on the wrong track with this, let us know your thoughts!
I’d agree with Gav. The 3-star rating seems a little harsh considering such a positive review. I think your critique could benefit from explaining why the establishment was marked down.
Hi Shauna,
I think it’s very clear that Kelly’s starter was a little disappointing, and this is one of the reasons why the bistro was marked down.
To my mind, the 3 stars certainly aren’t harsh – infact, we feel that the score is very accurate, and that the reason for this score is fully explained in the post. We really didn’t want these very issues to give the impression that our experience was anything less that enjoyable – but the issues remain, nonetheless.
We also feel that the fact that restaurants are judged against each other is a given. I don’t see how we could use some notional, entirely extrinsic standard to assess these eateries. Yes, there are objective standards of cooking and presentation that enter the equation, but after this the rating system has to be relevant to Northern Ireland, and the restaurants in it. There’s no rating system that I’m aware of in which you can look at a single score in isolation and understand what that score really means.
So, a bistro with a very limited menu from which you might struggle to find a dish you really want to order, for instance, probably won’t score as many stars as a restaurant with plenty of choice – the dining experience just isn’t as good. This is just one example, but it’s fairly illustrative.
That said, we’re going to introduce a more categorised system, so establishments can be judged by visitors on a like-against-like basis. Clearly the fact that a bistro like The Yellow Door is judged in the same way as somewhere like James Street South is causing people some problems – hopefully this will remedy the situation.
If you do visit The Yellow Door in Lisburn, we’d love to hear what you think!